I knew you forever and you were always old,soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scoldme for sitting up late, reading your letters,as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me.You posted them first in London, wearing fursand a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety.I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day,where you guided past groups of robbers, the sad holesof Whitechapel, clutching your pocketbook, on the wayto Jack the Ripper dissecting his famous bones.This Wednesday in Berlin, you say, you willgo to a bazaar at Bismarck's house. And Isee you as a young girl in a good world still,writing three generations before mine. I tryto reach into your page and breathe it back...but life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack.This is the sack of time your death vacates.How distant your are on your nickel-plated skatesin the skating park in Berlin, gliding pastme with your Count, while a military bandplays a Strauss waltz. I loved you last,a pleated old lady with a crooked hand.Once you read Lohengrin and every goosehung high while you practiced castle lifein Hanover. Tonight your letters reducehistory to a guess. The count had a wife.You were the old maid aunt who lived with us.Tonight I read how the winter howled aroundthe towers of Schloss Schwobber, how the tediouslanguage grew in your jaw, how you loved the soundof the music of the rats tapping on the stonefloors. When you were mine you wore an earphone.This is Wednesday, May 9th, near Lucerne,Switzerland, sixty-nine years ago. I learnyour first climb up Mount San Salvatore;this is the rocky path, the hole in your shoes,the yankee girl, the iron interiorof her sweet body. You let the Count chooseyour next climb. You went together, armedwith alpine stocks, with ham sandwichesand seltzer wasser. You were not alarmedby the thick woods of briars and bushes,nor the rugged cliff, nor the first vertigoup over Lake Lucerne. The Count sweatedwith his coat off as you waded through top snow.He held your hand and kissed you. You rattleddown on the train to catch a steam boat for home;or other postmarks: Paris, verona, Rome.This is Italy. You learn its mother tongue.I read how you walked on the Palatine amongthe ruins of the palace of the Caesars;alone in the Roman autumn, alone since July.When you were mine they wrapped you out of herewith your best hat over your face. I criedbecause I was seventeen. I am older now.I read how your student ticket admitted youinto the private chapel of the Vatican and howyou cheered with the others, as we used to doon the fourth of July. One Wednesday in Novemberyou watched a balloon, painted like a silver abll,float up over the Forum, up over the lost emperors,to shiver its little modern cage in an occasionalbreeze. You worked your New England conscience outbeside artisans, chestnut vendors and the devout.Tonight I will learn to love you twice;learn your first days, your mid-Victorian face.Tonight I will speak up and interruptyour letters, warning you that wars are coming,that the Count will die, that you will acceptyour America back to live like a prim thingon the farm in Maine. I tell you, you will comehere, to the suburbs of Boston, to see the blue-noseworld go drunk each night, to see the handsomechildren jitterbug, to feel your left ear closeone Friday at Symphony. And I tell you,you will tip your boot feet out of that hall,rocking from its sour sound, out ontothe crowded street, letting your spectacles falland your hair net tangle as you stop passers-byto mumble your guilty love while your ears die.